Two days after those historic words, "Barack Obama has been elected the 44th President of the United States," I am still floating in a haze of euphoria. Today I've been catching up on reading the post-election accounts, and every so often, the tears of Election Night well up again, and I sob with joy.
Friends, I grew up when there were still signs on the water fountains that said "White" and "Colored." I was torn up when Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. As a journalist, I've spent the past 35 years documenting America's injustices, and those harsh truths had soured my spirit and frozen my heart. The America that my parents loved, that they taught me to love, those ideals of freedom and justice and equality that my father had fought for in World War II, seemed a distant memory.
Then I was moved this past summer to volunteer for the Obama Dallas organization. Like so many of us, I gave as much time as I could, even though I knew it unlikely that Texas would give its 27 electoral votes to Obama. But I did what I could. I made the phone calls and sent emails, sold T-shirts and buttons and yard signs and when early voting came, worked as a poll greeter. And I witnessed something truly amazing: People of all colors and ethnic heritages were working together in common cause. They were energized, united, friendly, HOPEFUL.
One of my church friends says she saw me on local TV screaming my head off when the Obama Dallas watch party got the news that Barack was elected. We were all screaming and yelling and hugging and kissing and high-five-ing and fist-bumping and jumping and any other expression of joy you can imagine. But my friend Julie and I, and many others, were also weeping, stunned and grateful that we had lived long enough to see this particular piece of history being made, and to know that we helped to make it happen.
Yes, we did. Now the hard work of building a new America for the 21st Century stretches before us. We are no longer the prisoners of fear, because this we know: Yes, We Can!
God bless us all, all around the world, no exceptions!
Cynthia Astle
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